Victory: A Climate Change Denier Will No Longer Run The House Science Committee

Maddie Stone on Earther, shared by Maddie Stone to Gizmodo

However you feel about the outcome of last night’s election, if you care about evidence-based policy making, there’s one thing to cheer: The House Committee on Space, Science, and Technology will, for the first time in nearly a decade, be led by someone who accepts the conclusions of mainstream climate science.

It’s almost hard to imagine a world in which the House Science Committee is not a ‘Frankenstinian’ mockery of its name, cobbled together from dead theories and misguided lines of inquiry. It has been that way for so, so very long.

The committee’s death spiral began when Republicans assumed the control of the House in 2010, but it was when Texas Republican Lamar Smith became chair in 2013 that things really flew off the flat earth’s edge.

In short, the House Science Committee has been a dark place for rational discourse on climate change. Sitting on it has been a lonely and frustrating experience for Bill Foster, Congress’s lone scientist (until last night).

To be fair, the Republican-led committee has been more supportive of space exploration and astronomy, even though it favours further privatization of the sector and has criticised the James Webb Space telescope for going massively over-budget.

But these bright spots do not negate the damage Smith and his ilk have done to public understanding of climate science. In a statement released last night, Congresswoman Johnson laid out her priorities for the committee, including “promoting effective STEM education”, “defending the scientific enterprise from political and ideological attacks” and addressing climate change by “starting with acknowledging it is real”.

Last on Johnson’s to-do list? Restoring the credibility of the House Science Committee. It’s a tall order, but for the first time in years, I’m feeling hopeful about the possibility.